


How did you two meet?

by memorizingthedigitsofpi



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, FitzSimmons - Freeform, Meet-Cute, genre challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-08 18:19:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7768267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/memorizingthedigitsofpi/pseuds/memorizingthedigitsofpi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I feel like trying my hand at writing different genres, but I don't want to have to figure out a plot. Solution? Writing a different FS meet-cute scenario for each different genre I want to write. </p><p>I'm only going to write one chapter per genre and then reset for another meet-cute in the next chapter. If anyone wants to continue any of these as full-on fics, just <a href="http://memorizingthedigitsofpi.tumblr.com/ask">drop me a line</a> to let me know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Detective Fiction

The city outside was cold and rainy as Jemma Simmons sat hunched over her desk. A pool of light shone down on the file in front of her in the otherwise dark room, the flickering of the neon sign outside pulsing occasional bursts of red across the walls.

Simmons was the best private detective there was in London, not that you'd know it. Her office was small and cramped and smelled like stale curry from the restaurant downstairs. The furniture was cheap and ugly, but then her clients never stayed any longer than necessary. They weren't the type to chat.

They weren't the type to pay well, either.

Simmons, herself, stood out like a sore thumb in the sad and dreary decor. As threadbare as her office might be, she kept herself in much better knick. She found it made the job easier. No one expected a gorgeous dame with legs up to here to have a brain in her head. And it was her brains that made her so good.

She'd solved this latest case in a matter of days after being told it was a tough nut to crack. As so often happened, she was brought in as a last resort after every other private dick in town had come up empty. If she were a man, she'd be rich by now. Instead, she was still barely making ends meet.

Sighing as she closed the file, she waffled yet again over whether or not to take on domestic cases. They were sordid, but they paid the bills.

She glanced at the one light she had burning. Paying the bills was something she'd like to do more of.

She sighed again as she stood up, walking over to the file cabinet with her hips swinging in her pencil skirt and T-strap heels. One day, she'd get a case that _paid_.

The bell on her door jangled and she looked up in surprise. It was nine o'clock on a Thursday night. Not the usual time for a client to come calling.

"Can I help you?" she asked, looking the stranger up and down. He had his hat pulled down low over his face and the collar on his trench coat turned up. Clear signs that he didn't want anyone recognizing him. Probably a fraud case. Maybe bribery.

"I hope so," came a Glaswegian accent from out of the shadows. Then he took off his hat and shook the water off his coat, hanging them both on the coat rack by the door.

He was quite possibly the first client ever to use it.

"My name is Leopold Fitz," he said, holding out a hand to her. "And I'm being framed for murder."


	2. An Homage to Douglas Adams

Dr. Leopold Ignatius Fitz III, or Fitz as he preferred to call himself, had never quite got the hang of Sunday afternoons.

Friday nights were easy. Go to the pub, complain about the work week, drink more than he ought to, and get a taxi home.

As a result of which, Saturday mornings were both very easy (in that he knew exactly what was going to happen to him) and very very hard (because of exactly what happened to him).

Saturday afternoons were typically a mass of productivity. This was to counterbalance the complete _lack_ of producing anything but vomit and groans all morning. It was also to shore him up with enough feelings of being put-upon to allow his friends to drag him out again on Saturday night.

Sunday morning was therefore frequently a carbon copy of Saturday morning, but this time with the addition of brunch.

Sunday afternoons, though. Those were a problem. They were close enough to the work week that he didn't want to do anything fun at all because he knew that Monday morning was just hours away. But they were also far enough _away_ from the work week that he felt he _ought_ to do something fun before he couldn't do anything fun again for five days.

Generally speaking, he ended up staying home due to ambivalence and indecision.

On this _particular_ Sunday afternoon, he'd managed to overcome the ennui of the 20-something bachelor who had finally, for fives minutes at least, become bored of the internet, and he'd left his apartment.

He almost immediately decided that this was a mistake.

Have you ever been outside after a really good downpour? The air smells in that peculiar way that some people call 'fresh,' but those are people who grew up in London and have no idea what fresh air actually smells like. The sky is that grey colour reminiscent of the film that builds up on bathtubs if you don't wash them for long enough. The trees shine with the last few clinging droplets, just waiting for a breeze to blow them off and onto your head.

This was the world that Fitz walked out into in that flurry of optimism he had that for once a Sunday afternoon would be something other than a complete waste of time.

Two steps outside of his front door, he stepped into a puddle up to his ankle.

He was not wearing wellies.

He jumped back and was still cursing a blue streak when a taxi pulled into the kerb ahead of him, driving through exactly the same puddle that had just so completely soaked through his trainers and causing it to soak the rest of him, as well.

It was into his maelstrom of newly unleashed invective that a young woman stepped daintily out of said taxi, wellies first. She stared at him in exactly the way anyone else would stare at a soaking wet, vituperative Scotsman who was apparently shouting at no one at all.

And then, in a turn of events not usual in a story that begins in this manner, she frowned and turned away from him, walking down the street and out of his life.

Fitz, having no sense of narrative structure, paid no attention to this shocking development at all. He was too busy trying to come up with creative new ways to describe the cabbie's parentage.

It was at this point, that _another_ young woman, also wearing wellies, approached Fitz from behind.

Her name was Dr. Jemma Evangeline Simmons, and she had no difficulties with Sunday afternoons whatsoever. She found them a quiet and relaxing time to catch up on her reading.

Which is what she was doing at this very moment.

Unfortunately, she was also walking down the very same sidewalk that Fitz was currently re-dampening as he sputtered and fumed and dripped all over it.

In the kind of fated yet coincidental meeting that makes the previously arranged meeting look boring, she ran directly into Fitz's back and sent him sprawling bodily into the puddle that had already twice ruined his day.

It would be nice to say that this was the low point of the day for Fitz.

It would also be a lie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Admittedly, it's not terribly Douglas-Adams-y, but it was inspired by his writing style. Am I forgiven?


	3. Action

Jemma's blood was pounding in her ears. Her heart was beating fast, and her breathing was so harsh and loud that she could almost hear it over the sustained gunfire surrounding her. She allowed herself three precious seconds of rest, and then she darted out from behind a chunk of rubble and sprinted for a doorway.

Locked.

Again.

Plastering herself into the shallow alcove for minimal protection, she risked a brief glimpse past the wall just as another shot zipped past. It was so close, it had actually singed her hair, and the burning smell mixed with the smoke and the dust and her own sweat to make her want to throw up yet again.

Thankfully, there was nothing left to come up.

Her eyes darted around, searching desperately for shelter. She had to get out of this street and find cover. She was a sitting duck out here.

Above her head, the Chitauri were flying, buzzing around like a swarm of angry hornets. They were shooting at anything that moved and a lot of stuff that wasn't.

She let out an involuntary shriek as a piece of cornice dropped off the building she was barely protected by, landing with a crash and a cloud of dust not five feet from her.

Amazingly, through the haze and the fear and the adrenaline overload, she picked up a movement on the other side of the street. It was a light, flashing determinedly across her face and the wall next to her and then disappearing again. It was coming from what looked to be a pharmacy.

She sent up a mental prayer that there was someone in there who would open the door for her.

Taking a deep breath, she burst into another run. She'd had almost 15 seconds that time to catch her breath, and she made it almost halfway across the street in that first sprint. Ducking down between an overturned car and a hastily stopped bus, she sighted her destination again and then squat-ran to the next car and the next while trying not to get hit by falling rubble, alien guns, or friendly fire.

By the time she made it, her entire body was shaking from exhaustion and adrenaline and fear that she'd be left outside again. All of that left in a rush of relief when the door opened and a hand pulled her sharply inside.

"Are you hit?" someone was asking her, but her ears were still ringing and it came through as if spoken underwater.

"What?" she asked loudly, and yet still quiet to her own ears.

"Are you injured?" he asked, this time speaking directly into her ear.

She shook her head, still panting, and he helped her further into the store and away from the windows. As he lowered her onto the floor and gave her a bottle of water, she clutched his sleeve.

"Thank you," she said.

He nodded and smiled thinly. "You catch your breath and drink up. I'm going to check and see if there's anyone else out there."


	4. Soap Opera

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by request: this one's for recoveringrabbit  
> also, I decided to write it in script format. apologies if this makes it difficult to read. the caps do not mean shouting :P

**VOICEOVER:**

_PREVIOUSLY ON: MARVEL'S AGENTS OF SHIELD_

_AN EMPTY LAB CLASSROOM. WE SEE FITZ SITTING WITH HIS BACK TO THE DOOR, WRITING IN A NOTEBOOK. HE'S WEARING A HOODIE OVER A PLAID SHIRT OVER A TSHIRT AND A PAIR OF JEANS. HE IS LISTENING TO HIS IPOD WHILE HE WRITES. HE CLEARLY CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING GOING ON AROUND HIM._

**INT/DL - LIGHT COMING IN THROUGH THE LARGE WINDOWS. IT'S SNOWING OUTSIDE.**

**MS/PAN FROM BEHIND FITZ'S BACK, OVER HIS SHOULDER**

**CU/FITZ'S FACE. HE'S CHEWING ON THE BACK OF HIS PEN.**

**DEEP FOCUS/JEMMA ENTERING THE ROOM BEHIND HIM**

**JEMMA:**

LEOPOLD FITZ?

_FITZ STARTLES, DROPPING HIS PEN. HE TURNS AROUND SO QUICKLY ON HIS STOOL THAT HE FALLS OFF. HE CATCHES HIMSELF AFTER MERELY STUMBLING. HE HASTILY SNATCHES THE EARBUDS OUT OF HIS EARS._

**FITZ:**

JEMMA SIMMONS!

HE GAPES AT HER.

**VOICEOVER:**

_WE NOW CONTINUE WITH THIS WEEK'S EPISODE OF: MARVEL'S AGENTS OF SHIELD_

**INT/DL - LIGHT COMING IN THROUGH THE LARGE WINDOWS. IT'S SNOWING OUTSIDE.**

**TWO SHOT/MS/JEMMA AND FITZ**

_THEY STARE SILENTLY AT EACH OTHER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LAB  
_

**CU OF FITZ**

_HE STARES AT JEMMA WITH SURPRISE AND FEAR  
_

**CU OF JEMMA**

_SHE STARES AT FITZ IN ANGER  
_

**TWO SHOT/OTS OF FITZ LOOKING AT JEMMA**

_SHE RAISES HER HAND AND SLAPS HIM IN THE FACE  
_

**CU OF** **FITZ**

_HEAD TURNING TO CAMERA IN REACTION OF SLAP, HE PRESSES HIS HAND TO HIS CHEEK AND LOOKS LIKE HE'S IN PAIN_

**FITZ:**

WHAT THE HELL?!

_HE FROWNS IN ANGER AND TURNS TO LOOK AT HER._

**CU/PAN FROM FITZ'S FACE TO** **JEMMA'S**

_SHE IS FROWNING AND GRITTING HER TEETH._

**PAN TO MS/DEEP FOCUS LEFT SIDE OF JEMMA  
**

_HER HANDS ARE BALLED INTO FISTS AT HER SIDES. THEY ARE SHAKING.  
_

**JEMMA:**

(SHOUTING INDIGNANTL) THAT WAS FOR MARY SUE POOTS!

**TWO SHOT/MS**

_JEMMA SPINS ON HER HEEL AND STORMS OUT OF THE ROOM. SHE SLAMS THE DOOR AS SHE EXITS.  
_

**REACTION SHOT  
**

_FITZ LOOKS ANGRY AND CONFUSED.  
_

**FITZ:**

(SHOUTING AFTER HER) I DON'T KNOW WHO THAT IS!

**MS/PAN FROM A SIDE SHOT TO A FRONT ANGLE**

_FITZ SITS DOWN ON HIS STOOL, THIS TIME FACING THE DOOR. HE IS STILL RUBBING HIS CHEEK. HE WAGGLES HIS JAW FROM SIDE TO SIDE AS IF TO ASSESS FOR INJURY._

**FITZ:**

(SHOUTING AFTER HER, SARCASTICALLY. HE KNOWS SHE CAN'T HEAR HIM)

NICE TO MEET YOU!

_HE SPINS AROUND ON HIS STOOL, GRUMBLING INCOHERENTLY, AND PUTS HIS EAR BUDS BACK IN._

**SLOW PAN TO WS**

_MUSICAL OVERLAY: TINNY VERSION OF 'ALONE AGAIN, NATURALLY'  
_


	5. Gothic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for Lalalli because she asked so nicely :D

Leopold Fitz was Scottish by birth and Scottish by temperament, coming by both through the honest means of being born of his mother in that corner of the British Isles. His ancestors had tread those shores for many generations, and he was but the latest issue of the line.

His mother was respected by all in their community. She was a woman of learning as well as of compassion, and she tended well the sick and infirm at the University Hospital. She loved her patients as she loved her own son, and more than one ascribed their recovery to her doting care. She hadn't always been so employed, however. When Fitz was born, she was but eighteen years old, just out of high school and unable to take her spot at uni because of the child she gave birth to in the fall. It was her father, Fitz's grandfather, who had ensured the boy was looked after so that his daughter might be able achieve that promise what had always made him proud, throughout her life.

The circumstances surrounding her Fitz's birth spoke less to his mother's character than that of his father, however. It was a lamentable fact that Richard Leopold had been a scoundrel. An American come overseas to work abroad for the year, he'd seduced poor Kathryn Fitz with his worldly demeanor and Southern charm. He'd wooed her concertedly from May Day through Christmas, and by New Year the deed was complete. He'd departed for home believing she was lying, trying to trap him with a pregnancy that didn't exist. He'd laughed his disbelief at her in their last conversation.

From that point onwards, she knew she'd not see him again.

As an infant, Fitz was the child of his entire block of flats. Passed from woman to woman, home to home, he grew up believing his neighbours were the same as his family. He asked often after his father but learned nothing beyond his name and nationality. Everyone, it seemed, had poor memories when it came to the facts of one half of his parentage. They remained for years in that cheap apartment by the River Clyde with his grandfather watching him whenever he could and his mother studying in between his cries and his bedtime stories.

Growing up as he did, relying on the help and kindness of others, he came to believe in the best of those whom he met. His disposition, while occasionally prideful, was predominantly curious and fiercely loyal. One day, a playmate in the park made a disparaging remark about a distasteful woman who lived down the hall from him. She had a constantly sour expression and a poor reputation amongst the children in the estate, but to Fitz she was the woman with the lovely great cat and the dish of humbugs who always told him what lovely hair he had. He punched the other boy right in the nose and ended up getting trounced for his trouble, but his mother told him she was proud of him as she bandaged him up, and she gave him an extra biscuit with his glass of milk before bed.

When Fitz turned sixteen, he was accepted at a doctoral program in America. He told everyone he had applied there because it was the preeminent institution in his field. While this was true, it was not his primary focus in moving overseas. He'd done his own investigation into the whereabouts of his father and tracked him as far as Boston. Cambridge being immediately adjacent to that metropolis, Fitz's plans for his education were easily decided. Less easy was convincing his mother to let him go. In her eyes, he was still a child and no amount of genius would change that for her.

In the end, it was his grandfather who brokered the peace between them that allowed Fitz to traverse the Atlantic Ocean on his journey to discovery. Sadly, this proved to be the man's last wish as he perished of a heart attack not three weeks before Fitz was due to fly. He almost cancelled his plans at that point. No phantom father on the other side of the world was worth leaving his mother alone here at home. But the community that had raised him rallied around her, supporting her as they always had and as she had supported them in turn. Kathryn, surrounded by her people, as much her family as if they were blood, pulled Fitz aside at the funeral and squeezed his hand. She was proud of him, she said. And so was his grandfather. And they both expected him to do something great in this world.

With that thought at the forefront of his mind, Fitz set forth.

* * *

A little more than a year later, Fitz was sorely lacking in the type of community he'd grown up within. People in America were less forgiving of his short temper and his tendency toward insult and hyperbole. They found him odd and off-putting, not least because he was a full decade younger than his classmates and still excelling past them in his studies. He missed his mother and his grandfather and the sour-faced woman from down the hall. He missed the shouts and laughter that echoed through the thin cement walls. The shouts in America were different; less familiar; a jarring reminder that he was far from home. 

He never forgot his mother's injunction to do something great in the world. That was how, through the chance meeting of a man with one eye and the careful goading of a billionaire with a past more sombre than could be expected given his external temperament, Fitz joined the ranks of an organization meant to protect humanity from itself, and from those from other worlds.

It was with this solemn commandment in mind that Fitz entered the hallowed halls of the Academy on his first day, over-awed by the history of the organization and those who had attended it. His eyes trained heavenward at the rising towers of this new academe, he stumbled his way forward through the throng of other eager entrants, a group of salmon swimming upstream to spawn new ideas.

It is strange how two souls can be drawn together, all unknowing, on an inevitable path to their intertwined destinies. Strongly though we may resist the pull, the Fates hold sway over us and draw us together as they draw together the strings of our lives, measuring out of existence before that final cut.

Fitz was still entranced by the visions around him, eyes transfixed on all but the way before him, and thus is came about that his stumbling, distracted gait propelled him into the path of another new student at this illustrious institution. Her eyes were transfixed on him, although he noticed it not. A moment later, however, she made sure he noticed _her._

Through such means is Destiny made real: the determination of a young woman to meet a young man, both of them alone in a world of strangers and both seeking that community they had left behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gah. never again :P


	6. YA Novel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually an edited version of a thing I wrote on tumblr like 2 years ago, but I only had like 50 followers back then and no AO3 account, so odds are you haven't seen it yet. Plus, it wasn't FitzSimmons the first time around :P

Jemma had grown up in a man's world. That wasn't just a turn of phrase. She lived in a world run and populated by men who, during the nascent beginnings of a movement called "feminism," had decided that women were more trouble than they were worth.

At first, the men had laughed at and mocked the women they had raised, married, or been born to. The idea that women could think and act on their own was so ridiculous to them that they never expected anyone to take it seriously. Slowly, at first, but then with greater speed woman began to get rights. They could vote. They could own property. They could make decisions about their lives.

They were becoming... people.

Obviously, this couldn't be allowed to go on. The men started slowly, just as the women had. They started by claiming that these self-proclaimed "feminists" hated their own gender and everything it represented. They got mothers on their side by telling them that feminists wanted nothing to do with the care and raising of children. They got young women on their side by convincing them that in order to be worthy they had to hate their own sex and try to be anything but the same as other girls (all of whom, of course, were silly and stupid and thought the wrong things).

Eventually, laws began changing. Women could still vote, but districts were redrawn so that either male voters outnumbered female voters or so that they were populated overwhelmingly with the women they'd brought over to their side. Women lost control of their bodies. They were unable to protest crimes committed against them. Any suggestion of unfair hiring practices was laughed out of the court room. After all, what self-respecting woman would shame her husband by actually trying to work outside of the home?

Finally, the last step was taken. Systematic sterilization of all women was performed at puberty. The justification was to curtail the enormous rise in teen pregnancies that had accompanied the eradication of sexual health teachings across the country. If women knew how sex worked, if they could control whether or not they got pregnant, that was one more tool that men would lose. With the gerrymandering that had already been done, the vote wasn't even close. In a landslide victory, it was decided that the only way a woman was allowed to be pregnant was if her local government allowed it.

It didn't take long after that for it to become clear that the only new mothers were those who followed the party line. Any hint of feminist thinking or resistance against the state immediately made a woman unqualified to bear children. The number of miscarriages rose suspiciously. Also suspicious was that they seemed to coincide with being pregnant with a daughter. The female birth rate was one third that of the male.

Jemma's mother had escaped before her sterilization. It was not long after the new law had been enacted, and she'd learned about feminism and its teachings from her own mother and father. Her parents wanted something better for her, so they prepared her as best they could for survival in the mountainous regions to the west.

Jemma had been born when her mother was thirty-five years old. If she told that to anyone nowadays, they would have looked at her in shock. No one had children after the age of thirty. Everyone knew that was deathly dangerous for both mother and child. The risks, even after twenty-five, were too much to think about.

Jemma knew differently, though. She'd had twice the schooling of most anyone else. She'd gone to school the same as other children, pretending that her mother was actually her grandmother, playing the part of the sweet, docile girl to perfection, knowing that if she did anything else, she put not just herself but her family at risk. It wouldn't just be her mother who would be punished for teaching her women's rights but also her father for not keeping better control of his wife. But after school, in the family home, she learned about biology and reproduction, sexual health and the history of the feminist movement that had been put down before she was born. 

When she was 12 years old, her family moved across the country. Somehow, her parents had managed to procure papers that said she'd been sterilized. They wanted her to have the choice of whether or not she would become a mother, and they taught her how to avoid it in the meantime. They taught her other things as well.

The resistance was small and spread out. There were no secret meetings, no hideaways full of guns. It was just families here and there, men and women and children who remembered or had been taught what the world could be like if women had power. They shared stories of female inventors and scientists, artists and writers, leaders of governments and religions. To Jemma, it all seemed like a fairytale, but they were all there in books published a hundred years before.

Now, at the age of nineteen, Jemma was a key player in her local resistance. She was a favourite amongst leaders of the local government, and her reputation as a truly dutiful and obedient young woman had them clamoring to marry her off to their sons. But she wasn't satisfied with the idea of local politics. She wanted to rise right to the top. With the ear of national leadership, she'd be able to influence real change, from the inside. 

She had her eye on the son of President William H. Fitz.


End file.
